“I’ve been hoping to have a Friday like this one for a while now even if, of course, it’s the Saturday and Sunday that’s important. So I am glad that I was tenth in the morning and seventh this afternoon, which is a good sign for us. It’s a complicated circuit and I love it. Today, we made progress with each change we made on the car, keeping each modification and then moving further forward. On my long run on Option, it started quite well until I ran into traffic, but in general the pace wasn’t looking too bad – definitely a positive Friday for us.”

“It was a troublefree Friday and we worked to our usual programme, working on the car set-up and balance. I have to say I am not yet happy with it, mainly having some difficulty with understeer. However, it was an encouraging day. I did long runs on both tyres and although I didn’t get a clear picture from the Prime, the Option was good.”

Laurent Mekies (Head of Vehicle Performance): “We seem to be in good shape this weekend and we are satisfied with how the car is reacting to what we do to it. We tried various set-up changes this morning and we have found a decent compromise here as a starting point for the weekend. We still have some work to do to give the drivers what they want. It is again very close in the midfield, so the important thing now is that tonight, we manage to make the usual step forward that we normally see from Friday to Saturday and we will be looking at the data to see what changes we can make overnight.”